This sexy cyclist calendar features a slightly unsettling human-bike romance

Is bike porn not quite, well, PORNY enough for you? Then you need the 2014 Bike Date Calendar, the equivalent of a cycling-themed Harlequin novel. Why content yourself with ogling bikes when you can ogle a bike that’s about to GET SOME?

Colorado photographer Corie Spruill wanted to make an alternative to male-gazey calendars like Cyclepassion, which features nearly nude female cyclists straddling bike parts. So she photographed her female friends on “dates” with their wheels. As Spruill told the Atlantic:

We need men because we need romance in life. But if a bike could provide romance, we might not need a man.

“Bike Date” is partly a comment on the lack of deep connections between human partners, which Spruill says can be “our biggest frustration with men.”… Not to imply anybody in “Bike Date” has more than a platonic relationship with their cycles — it’s just a funny undertone.

Nope, definitely nothing creepy about a woman unzipping her jeans while staring at the bike propped expectantly on her bed. Not at all.

The photos (which will be followed by a male version) are perhaps unintentional commentary about objectifying women. A bikini-clad woman is reduced to an object — while on a date with an actual object. Looking at a lady playing pool through the frame of a bike makes the viewer feel as cold and steely as the bike itself.

We’re used to seeing a seductive female gaze directed at either the camera or a shirtless Abercrombie model, so to see it lustily fixed on a bike is both jarring and hilarious. Here’s to female cyclists and whoever — or whatever — is lucky enough to share their bed.